International Workshop

On 25-26 February 2010, the Center hosted the first international
workshop to be sponsored by CEELBAS, the British inter-university
consortium concerned with East Central European Studies (www.ceelbas.ac.uk).
Dr Robert Pyrah, CEELBAS fellow at Oxford University, coordinated the
Workshop together with Dr Tarik Amar, Academic Director at the Center.

20
years after the fall of Communism in East-Central Europe, research on
‘culture’ either emphasises political narratives, especially
post-Soviet nationalism, as a guiding framework, or else focuses on
sociological trends outside the field of historical and artistic study.
This workshop aims to open new research vistas on the theme of East
Central European ‘cultural processes’ by engaging an international,
trans-generational group both of leading scholars, but also younger
researchers pursuing innovative work in the field of history, cultural
history/studies, and comparative artistic/literary studies. Its primary
aim is to transcend the binary research pattern highlighted above by
addressing the topic: ‘Beyond Nationalism’, which seeks to re-orient
the research focus on culture in the region towards neglected as well
as contemporary and future-oriented questions, such as: the impact of
the current economic crisis on cultural production; and the role of
non-nationalist narratives (e.g. regionalism and internationalism in
cultural production).

Although the composition of the workshop
reflected a bias towards Ukrainica, the ultimate aim was to gather the
contributions, together with commissioned pieces, into a volume that
explores the current state of play in research on the culture of the
region, following the publication by Pyrah/Turda in the Legenda series
as follows: http://www.mhra.org.uk/cgi-bin/legenda/legenda.pl?catalogue=b9781906540876